“With Nozkowski, a good, slow look-’n’-solve is part of the fun,” Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes has observed in response to Nozkowski’s puzzle-like paintings. Packed with familiar yet alien forms, they translate the everyday world into abstraction. (At Pace Gallery’s 508 West 25th Street location through March 23rd).
Thomas Nozkowski, Untitled (9-22), oil on linen on panel, 2012.
Constructed of discarded building materials, Song Dong’s ‘Doing Nothing’ mountains mark the replacement of China’s traditional historical obstacles (‘three big mountains’) of imperialism, feudalism and capitalism, by current concerns about education, health care and housing. Neon characters on the wall spelling out ‘doing’ and ‘nothing’ are subtle protests of slow progress. (At Pace Gallery, 534 and 510 West 25th Street through Feb 23rd).
Song Dong, Doing Nothing Mountains, installation view, window, glass, hinge, doorknob, handrail, lock, multi-layer board, socket, wire and paint, 2011-12.
Installation art pioneers Edward & Nancy Kienholz’s 1985 sculpture ‘The Ozymandias Parade’ is heartfelt and bitter enough to give pause to both post U.S. presidential election gloaters and wound-lickers. Depicting a national leader and his deputy falling from horses and a top ranking general riding an elderly taxpayer’s back, it also reveals the results of a poll taken this fall prior to the installation asking, “Are you happy with your government?’ The answer was ‘no.’ (At Pace Gallery, 510 West 25th Street through Dec 22nd).
John Szarkowski, MoMA’s photography director for nearly 30 years, called Lee Friedlander’s nude photos, “… the most unblinkingly, unreservedly candid descriptions of other people’s bodies that serious photography has produced.” Pace Gallery proves his point with a show of photos from the late 70s to the early 90s that practically interrogate female bodies in their intensity. (On 57th Street through Dec 22nd).
In the 90s, Zhan Wang caused a stir in China by intervening in the landscaping around new, modern buildings by replacing natural rock formations with his large, chrome-covered stainless steel scholars rocks. In the atrium of 590 Madison Ave, the ‘stones’ are in keeping with the glass wall and bamboo plantings, but they still have a ghostly, shape-shifting presence.